Importance of capacitors on the tone pots?

[gnugear]

How important is the quality of capacitor used between the guitar tone and volume pots? Is it a transparency issue or does it effect something else with the performance of the pickups?

[kevlar3000]

Re: Importance of capacitors on the tone pots?

What are you done with amps now? lol

[Vasshu the humanoid typhoon]

Re: Importance of capacitors on the tone pots?

Turned them all into transistor heads

[gnugear]

Re: Importance of capacitors on the tone pots?

Gee, they make such a difference in amps, maybe they're magic in guitars too!

[Vasshu the humanoid typhoon]

Re: Importance of capacitors on the tone pots?

Hehe too little current in guitars...it is of no matter really.

[RiffRaff]

Re: Importance of capacitors on the tone pots?

The debate on Caps in the tone circuit is huge!!! Some say it absolutely doesn't matter because the circuit isn't active (under power) so the quality of the caps plays virtually no roll in shaping the tone - where as other buy expensive caps (you can spend as much as $80 on some "vintage" parts) and swear they make huge changes. I've only modded my tone circuit in one way that I (IMHO) can say it did change my overall tone, I took my tone pot, opened it up and put a few coats of fingernail polish on the pad which the wiper meets when you want NO tone changes - it takes the tone pot completely out of the circuit. I get more "presence" in the sound of the guituar - nothing huge but I've played around with different caps and it's the only thing I've done that I could hear the difference afterwards.

[elvis-santana]

Re: Importance of capacitors on the tone pots?

I like to voice my rig on the bright side and brown it a little with the tone rolled back a little. I use old Spragues, the 5/16" thick barrel type. No comparison with the little ceramics.

[Curly]

Re: Importance of capacitors on the tone pots?

Orange Drops have a little resonance compared to the ceramic discs.

[Tweed]

Re: Importance of capacitors on the tone pots?

Folks will always debate the differences in compositon...ceramic, foil-oil, teflon and so on. What I think most of us will agree on, however is that the value of the cap makes a big difference in tone. It most certainly does in my guitars.

[Duncan]

Re: Importance of capacitors on the tone pots?

Folks will always debate the differences in compositon...ceramic, foil-oil, teflon and so on. What I think most of us will agree on, however is that the value of the cap makes a big difference in tone. It most certainly does in my guitars.

Completely agree with this. The value is critical, the composition, well, the jury is still out on that one, but i DO like the total result I got with the pot and cap upgrade with the RS kit...

[xerxes]

Re: Importance of capacitors on the tone pots?

i have a question then, does a higher pot value produce a higher treble sound? whats the comparison?

[ArtieToo]

Re: Importance of capacitors on the tone pots?

Think of a pot/cap combo as a "treble" valve, that dumps to ground.

The cap is how big the drain pipe is.
The pot is how far the valve is open.

A larger value cap means you have a bigger pipe to ground.
(You'll dump more treble.)

A larger value pot is the opposite. Its higher resistance - opposing the flow to ground.
A 500k pot at "5" is electrically identical to a 250k pot at "10".
It will allow you to "close-the-valve" a bit more.

Edit: Just to summarize: a higher value pot will allow you to "preserve" a bit more treble when at "10". All tone pots, of any value, are identical when on "0". (A short is a short.)

[MattPete]

Re: Importance of capacitors on the tone pots?

I'm not sure if I like Artie's analogy for caps.

How about this: the cap determines the cut-off point where the frequency band is "treble" or "not treble". Everything above that point will be dumped to ground as the tone knob is turned down.

If you use a higher value cap (i.e. .047), the "treble" zone will reach futher down, so when you turn the tone knob down, you will be removing more mids and producing mud. If you use a higher value cap (i.e. .01), the "treble" zone starts higher, so if you turn down the tone knob, you'll be removing just the high frequencies and leaving the mids (and maybe high-mids) alone.

So...the pot opens and closes the valve, and the cap determines what frequency range that valve covers.

[jeremy]

Re: Importance of capacitors on the tone pots?

mattpetes analogy is pretty good.

ive been using orange drops for a long time, they work fine and are easy to find and inexpensive

[Wattage]

Re: Importance of capacitors on the tone pots?

Caps make a difference absolutely, obviously value more than type. .01's little roll off -.047 much larger roll off. I find Orange Drops to be the best for most of my guitars, never messed much with vintage style caps so I can't comment on them but certainly an OD vs. a ceramic disc there is a noticeable difference. It is not neccessarily a huge difference but there are subtleties that are there.